Social Landscapes of the Inter‐Mountain West: A Comparison of ‘Old West’ and ‘New West’ Communities*

Abstract Rural communities have experienced dramatic demographic, social, and economic transformations over the past 30 years. Historically characterized by close links between natural resources and social, cultural, and economic structures, few of today's rural communities remain heavily dependent upon traditional extractive industries like ranching, forestry, and mining. New forms of development linked to natural and cultural amenities, including tourism and recreation, have evolved to sustain the link between community and resources. The Inter‐Mountain West region offers an excellent example of this distinction. Many of the region's rural communities have experienced substantial population growth resulting from the in‐migration of a new kind of rural resident. Their arrival, in a process some have associated with the emergence of a “New West,” has transformed rural places. However, amenity‐related social and economic structures have not occurred uniformly across space. This paper uses factor analysis and exploratory spatial data analysis to analyze demographic characteristics related to the “New West” phenomena in Inter‐Mountain West communities and the spatial patterns found in the degree of “New West‐ness” that each community exhibits.     

Health activism and the logic of connective action. A case study of rare disease patient organisations

This exploratory work investigates the role of digital media in expanding health discourse practices in a way to transform traditional structures of agency in public health. By focusing on a sample of rare disease patient organisations as representative of contemporary health activism, this study investigates the role of digital communication in the development of (1) bottom-up sharing and co-production of health knowledge, (2) health public engagement dynamics and (3) health information pathways. Findings show that digital media affordances for patient organisations go beyond the provision of social support for patient communities; they ease one-way, two-way and crowdsourced processes of health knowledge sharing, exchange and co-production, provide personalised routes to health public engagement and bolster the emergence of varied pathways to health information where experiential knowledge and medical authority are equally valued. These forms of organisationally enabled connective action can help the surfacing of personal narratives that strengthen patient communities, the bottom-up production of health knowledge relevant to a wider public and the development of an informational and eventually cultural context that eases patients’ political action.     

基于信息化引领的产业融合研究

当前,信息产业融合型的增长模式正在快速改变着社会经济的运行方式。产业融合正在加速产业结构的变动,也在推动产业转型升级。产业间的融合渗透促进了新兴业务的活跃爆发,为产业发展带来了一股全新的力量。应当以此为契机,培育新一代产业增长极,以产业融合有力地推动战略性新兴产业发展。     

Do developing economies require creative industries? Some old theory about new China

This paper argues that media and communications theory, as with cultural and creative industries analysis, can benefit from a deeper understanding of economic growth theory. Economic growth theory is elucidated in the context of both cultural and media studies and with respect to modern Chinese economic development. Economic growth is a complex evolutionary process that is tightly integrated with socio‐cultural and political processes. This paper seeks to explore this mechanism and to advance cultural theory from an erstwhile political‐economy perspective to one centred about the co‐evolutionary dynamics of economic and socio‐political systems. A generic model is presented in which economic and social systems co‐evolve through the origination, adoption and retention of new ideas, and in which the creative industries are a key part of this process. The paper concludes that digital media capabilities are a primary source of economic development.     

CONTROL: the extractive ecology of corn monoculture

This article tells the history of the industrial and biotechnological development of large-scale corn agriculture, from a new materialist perspective. Addressing the large-scale economy of industrial food production as a form of more-than-human configuration, it demonstrates how corn has been made into a quintessential commodity and factor of production for a consumption-based economy. Set within discourses around the climate crisis, this account critically assesses the Anthropocene and its advocacy for human accountability in regards to the exploitation of nonhuman matters. I ask: who is the Anthropos? How does it/he/she meet with its domesticated subjects, or rather makes them into domesticable materials? Telling the history of corn monoculture from a new materialist standpoint exposes this industry’s distribution of agency, power and control across a diversity of human and nonhuman actors. This is at the centre of this article’s three sections: (1) an argument for inscribing extractivism within new materialist literature, (2) an account of the industrialization of corn monoculture, exposing the industry’s main mechanisms and economic endeavours, as well as its ramifications with a biopolitics of invasion and (3) the biotechnological development of the industry and its shifts from a biopolitics of vegetal matter to an informational extractivism and a necropolitics of killable life. Thus I argue that if the industry of corn monoculture belongs to a broader network of detrimental industries characteristic of the Anthropocene, the geological Anthropos is not to be understood as synonymous with the human species, but as a very restrictive ecology of humans and nonhumans, including corporate, industrial, technoscientific and extractive actors. As such, the article emphasizes the moral necessity of rupturing with the narrative of the Anthropocene, a discourse better suited for supporting existing mechanisms of domination and exploitation constitutive of the economy of climate change.     

三网融合背景下推进上海数字内容产业发展的对策研究

数字内容产业已成为上海经济、社会与文化发展的新增长点,三网融合又为上海数字内容产业的发展提供了更为广阔的空间。在三网融合发展背景下,推进上海数字内容产业发展的基本思路可以概括为"一二三四工程"和"五项落地政策"。"一二三四工程"分别指"一个指导思想"——科学发展观、经济发展方式转变;"两种发展机制"——市场机制、政府管理机制;"三个发展方向"——内容创意、整合运营与终端工程建设;"四个政策着力点"——产业发展、园区建设、平台服务和企业扶持。"五个落地政策"分别是财税政策、融资政策、人才培养引进政策、创新政策、知识产权保护政策。     

Economic transition and new patterns of parent‐adult child coresidence in Urban China

This study uses national data from the 1996 Life History and Social Change in Contemporary China survey (N= 3,087) to gauge the effect of the economic transition on parent‐adult child coresidence in urban China. Previous studies find that, thanks to state actions, traditional patterns in coresidence persisted in post‐Mao urban China. This study still finds high levels of coresidence. China's aging population, coupled with an underdeveloped social security system, means that the traditional role of family will remain strong. It also uncovers three new patterns, however, best explained as caused by changes in the economic realm. First, the coresidence pattern changes over parents’ life course, shifting from child‐centered to parent‐centered as parents age. Second, class differentials begin to emerge, most notably seen in the unique patterns of the entrepreneurial class. Last, gender differentials remain significant, but the tilt toward sons has strengthened.     

Interactive production planning and ergonomic assessment with Digital Human Models--introducing the Editor for Manual Work Activities (ema)

The aging workforce is a risk factor for manufacturing industries that contain many jobs with high physical workloads. Thus, ergonomic risk factors have to be avoided in early phases of production planning. This paper introduces a new tool for simulating manual work activities with 3D human models, the so-called emaΦ. For the most part, the emaΦ software is based on a unique modular approach including a number of complex operations that were theoretically developed and empirically validated by means of motion capturing technologies. Using these modules for defining the digital work process enables the production planner to compile human simulations more accurately and much quicker compared to any of the existing modeling tools. Features of the emaΦ software implementation, such as ergonomic evaluation and MTM-time analyses, and the workflow for practical application are presented.     

The changing role of trade unions in the sustainable development agenda

Managing the large-scale restructuring away from the previously established resource-wasting industrial mass production and consumption model towards a socially balanced and resource-efficient economy requires an adaptation of interest reconciliation mechanisms, including also new strategic approaches by the main actors. As we are speaking of a transition towards a new model, the role of actors is essential, even if, in most of the climate-change literature, there is scant consideration or analysis of the actors, their interests, and their ideas. The basic question is not simply how ‘civil issues’ can be integrated into the established forms of social dialogue and how trade unions will need to adapt their agenda accordingly, but, more fundamentally, whether these structures are capable of giving a boost to a true paradigm shift in overcoming the unsustainable production model. In other words, are trade unions and social dialogue structures indeed ‘locked into’ this production model, and, if not, what is the way forward? We will examine in this article how dialogue structures and key actors develop new strategies and live up to new challenges in the context of sustainable development. After framing the main context of the climate-change debate in the first section, we present a critical view of the ‘capital–labour’ deal as it was established in the post-WW2 period. In the third section we put forward three main arguments as to how and why trade unions and social dialogue structures are actually in a position to take up broader issues, expand the dialogue, and move away from the resource-wasting consumer-industrial production model. We also show how the trade union movement – at its different organisational levels – takes up this narrative. This is a historical process entailing pitfalls and contradictions, in so far as the broader societal role of trade unions has no obvious roots in their origins and early history. Becoming involved in the great societal challenges of mankind, as in the exemplary case of the paradigm shift in production and consumer patterns of industrial society, may be liable to occasional tensions with their original membership-focused approach. The strategic considerations, on the other hand, of how the transformation to a low-carbon economy should be managed and how its unavoidable costs should be distributed (among employers, employees, the state and consumers) are issues more in line with their traditional role. Contradictions and differing visions necessarily appear also between different organisational levels of the trade union movement.     

阿拉伯经济的一体化

阿拉伯国家具有相似的政治和文化社会环境，其经济实现一体化的基础不亚于欧洲国家。阿拉伯国家在经济一体化发展道路上的机遇与挑战并存，在信息经济的背景之下，阿经济一体化有了更丰富的内涵和更广阔的发展空间。     

Couple network patterns of newcomers in an Australian city

Data from a study of newcomer families in Canberra, Australia, are used to illustrate patterns of couples' network formation in a new social setting. The discussion focuses on particular couple network patterns which newcomers developed during their first year and on the influence of these patterns on the newcomers' experience of the new social environment. Different network structures were found to affect the newcomers' potential for both individual change and the development of intimate relationships in this situation.     

Sociology and development in the 1990s: Critical challenges and empirical trends

Recent transformations of global economic structures have been accompanied by divergent national, regional, and local patterns of development, including severe socioeconomic crises for many Third World countries. At the same time, established conceptualizations of development processes have been called into question by divergent models of social change, such as those of world systems and postmodernist theorists. These phenomena present major analytical challenges for sociologists specializing in the study of development. New technologies and production processes, changing forms of international dependency, and the appearance of new social actors are among the most important topics for study. We argue that political economy, based on midrange propositions and comparative historical methods, constitutes the most fruitful approach to this task.     

Let’s be careful out there … : how digital rights advocates educate citizens in the digital age

From the early days of the printed press, citizens have challenged and modified the information environment as constructed by governments and media organizations. In the digital era, this struggle is manifested in the work of civil-society organizations calling to expand the boundaries of digital rights such as access to the internet, freedom of speech, and the right to privacy. Alongside their traditional activity of confronting governments and internet organizations, these bodies have also engaged in educating citizens about their rights. In order to shed light on such educational efforts, I examine the activities of four civil-society organizations operating in three countries (Germany, Israel, and the U.S.) by conducting a content analysis of their websites between 2013 and 2015. The results suggest that the organizations’ interactions with the public are guided by three main principles: (1) cultural informational framing: delivering accurate technological and political information, which is framed so as to resonate with the cultural premises and everyday lives of the target audiences; (2) personal activism: propelling citizens toward participation, primarily through political clicktivism and by providing them with technological guidance and tools for digital self-protection; and (3) branding digital rights activism: fostering a unique image for a particular organization’s digital rights activism, mostly through selling merchandise to citizens. Using these strategies, the organizations aim to construct the social–political–cultural identity of a generation who are knowledgeable, politically active, and aware of their rights in the digital age. The characteristics of this identity are discussed in the conclusion.     

In search of a happy medium: How the structure of interorganizational networks influence community economic development strategies

Routes to economic development attract considerable attention among social scientists, policy makers, and community activists. Increasingly, social scientists examine various attributes of communities, their members, and their natural surroundings that facilitate and inhibit economic development. However, few empirical analyses exist that analyze the impact of a community's network structure on different forms of economic development such as on industrial recruitment and self-development. Using data collected from six communities in Washington State, the impact of a community's interorganizational network structure on industrial recruitment and self-development is examined. Results suggest that different types of network structures are better suited for different economic development strategies. A certain level of cohesiveness among community organizations and institutions are favorable for implementing self-development projects. However for industrial recruitment, networks that are bridging facilitate more types of economic development. While bonding and bridging network structures appear to be at odds with one another, it is possible for communities to increase both forms of economic development by maintaining a certain level of cohesiveness among subcomponents and increasing the number of organizations that serve as cut-points connecting non-redundant sources of information. These findings illustrate the need for communities and local activists to consider a community's network structure when deciding on an economic development strategy.     

WORK AND THE CITY IN THE e-SOCIETY A critical investigation of the sociospatially situated character of economic production in the digital content industries in the UK

The aim of this paper is to ground debates about the 'new economy' or 'e-society' in the practice of individuals and companies producing 'new media'. The uncontroversial starting point is to question the generalization in much theorizing, and the tendency to technological reductive accounts of social and economic change. The focus here is to point to the intellectual sources of much policy in this field. The authors present case study material of three very specific parts of the new media/digital content industries (film special effects, computer games and web design). The paper concludes that both technological reductive and agentic accounts have underplayed the continuing importance of the social and economic embeddedness of production, and of the situated co-constitution of technologies, people and places. The differences between industries associated with labour processes, labour markets, users and markets for goods are highlighted. These particularities begin to offer more robust accounts of location and organization.     

Food Security: An Ecological–Social Analysis to Promote Social Development

Coupled with the obesity epidemic, food insecurity presents a public health and social crisis. The United States' industrialized food system embodies an unsustainable network of production and unequal distribution of food creating threats to both the natural environment and human development. Ecological, economic, and social systems are interdependent and their relationships to food security are complex and dynamic. Social workers have a unique set of community practice knowledge and skills that can help communities achieve greater access to affordable, healthy food. Building interdisciplinary networks to change food policies and develop sustainable and equitable food systems can address food insecurity.     

New community governance in small rural towns: the Australian experience

State and federal governments in Australia have developed a range of policy instruments for rural areas in Australia that are infused with a new sense of ‘community’, employing leading concepts like social capital, social enterprise, community development, partnerships and community building. This has encouraged local people and organisations to play a greater role in the provision of their local services and has led to the development of a variety of ‘community’ organisations aimed at stemming social and economic decline. In Victoria, local decision-making, before municipal amalgamations, gave small towns some sense of autonomy and some discretion over their affairs. However, following municipal amalgamations these small towns lost many of the resources—legal, financial, political, informational and organisational—associated with their former municipal status. This left a vacuum in these communities and the outcome was the emergence of local development groups. Some of these groups are new but many of them are organisations that have been reconstituted as groups with a broader community focus. The outcomes have varied from place to place but overall there has been a significant shift in governance processes at community level. This paper looks at the processes of ‘community governance’ and how it applies in a number of case studies in Victoria.     

WORKING IN “HIGH-TECH”: RESEARCH ISSUES AND OPPORTUNITIES FOR THE INDUSTRIAL SOCIOLOGIST*

This article outlines some issues concerning the organization of work in the new “high technology” industries. High technology industries are defined as industries involved in the manufacture of electronic information processing machinery and related products. Two central tensions are key to understanding work in the new high technology industries. First, a limited reduction in the prevalance of repetitive tasks is counterbalanced by increasing isolation of workers due to semi-automated production processes. This tension may be mediated by intentional efforts on the part of unions and/or management to recreate meaningful work environments. Second, potential empowerment arising from the creation of new job related skills is frequently offset by continuing high unemployment in the broader labor market that is to some extent a result of the very success of high technology production tcchniques. Difficulties in realizing potential aspects of empowerment may be further amplified by large-scale utilization of female and minority labor in high technology industries in the West and Southwest. Research techniques of addressing these issues are also surveyed and evaluated.     

A ‘Tripadvisor’ for disability? Social enterprise and ‘digital disruption’ in Australia

ABSTRACT

We explore how social enterprises can use platform technologies to plug ‘informational gaps’ in the provision of disability services. Such gaps are made more apparent by policies promoting self-directed care as a means of giving service users more choice and control. We use a case study of a start-up social enterprise seeking to provide a TripAdvisor style service to examine the potential for social innovation to ‘disrupt’ current models of service. The case study suggests that any disruptive effects of such changes are not due to new digital technology per se, nor to novel platform business models, but rather rest in the manner in which the moral orders which justify current patterns of social disablement can be challenged by social innovation.